If this seems like a carefully timed movie, the characters’ movements almost choreographed to where they stand, that’s because it is. We come and go from the present, director Drew Goddard ( Cabin in the Woods) toting his audience between decades, perspectives, and in particular, the hotel’s distinct spaces, with Swiss-movement precision. Miles’ ineptitude, although most certainly not the true extent of his job at the hotel, becomes sympathetic. Laramie’s Southern drawl, as one might have already guessed, is fake.

Night falls, rain comes down in sheets, and the characters’ stories reveal themselves, veering away from the hotel’s lurid guest rooms to times past: Father Flynn in a podunk town, operating the heist that has brought him back to the El Royale a decade down the line, Darlene had a viciously bad day at work in a music studio, Emily had an even worse evening at home, as a child with a suspect bump on her head, hiding her little sister under a bed. Dakota Johnson stars in Twentieth Century Fox’s BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYAL. A twerpy concierge, Miles (Lewis Pullman) gets his motley crew of guests checked in, not bothering to inquire too deeply into the deliberation Laramie and Father Flynn, in particular, demonstrate regarding the rooms where they’d like to stay. The uneasy opening party of Bad Times at the El Royale is broken up by the arrival of Emily (Dakota Johnson), a hippie type who seems to be having a bad day. Featured image: L-R: Jon Hamm, Jeff Bridges, and Cynthia Erivo star in Twentieth Century Fox’s BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYAL. For a traveling salesman, Laramie seems to know an awful lot about the history of his abode for the evening, explaining to Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) and singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) the hotel’s once glorious past and its strategic location, split as it is by a red line across the Nevada-California border, which continues out into the parking lot. When Laramie, a vacuum cleaner salesman with an off-sounding drawl (Jon Hamm), steps behind the bar to make a pot of a coffee in the lobby of the El Royale, no attendant to be seen, it’s clear this fancy yet faded, empty hotel isn’t your average roadside motel, no matter how welcoming the vintage neon sign outside.

Bad times at el casino royale